The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods of creating a two-dimensional representation of a model, and more specifically, to systems and methods for creating and storing a plurality of configurations (e.g., combinations of visible components) of a two-dimensional illustration in a single standard illustration file that enables a user to interactively display a selected configuration.
Conventional systems and methods of creating a two-dimensional model use lines to represent visible edges of a component. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a two-dimensional model that includes components 102 and 104 is shown. Each component includes lines that represent edges of a cube. However, a placement and orientation of components may result in components overlapping other components. For example, as shown in FIG. 2, component 102 overlaps a portion of component 104. To preserve an appearance of each of the components, the overlapped segments of the lines from component 104 may be removed, as shown in FIG. 3. When a selected configuration does not include components that overlap other components, visible components may be missing segments of lines that represent the visible components, as shown in FIG. 4.
To overcome the deficiencies of the methods and systems that use lines to represent visible edges of a component, other conventional systems and methods use polygons to represent surfaces of a component. Using polygons preserves an appearance of the components when a placement and orientation results in the components overlapping and the overlapping components are no longer visible. However, a problem arises when a component overlaps another component in such a way that one of the components is both “in front of” and “behind” another component. For example, FIG. 5 shows a model 500 that includes three components, component 502, component 504, and component 506. However, component 502 is “behind” component 504, component 504 is “behind” component 506, and component 506 is “behind” component 502. Thus, because using polygons to represent surfaces of components requires each of the opaque closed path graphic elements to be displayed in a particular order when a placement and orientation of the polygons results in the components overlapping, conventional systems and methods cannot address a situation (such as shown in FIG. 5) where a component is both “in front of and behind” one or more other components. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 6, using conventional systems and methods result in component representation 602 to be shown “behind” component 604. However, in attempt to display component representation 602 is “behind” component representation 604, component representation 604 is “behind” component representation 606, and component representation 606 is “behind” component representation 602, using conventional systems and methods would result in component representation 606 not being able to be place both “in front of” component representation 602 and “behind” component representation 604.